A Century of Revolutions - Centennial of the Great Syrian Revolt (1925-2025)

A century ago, in 1925, a small group of fighters sparked a movement of armed resistance south of Damascus, hoping to free the region from French colonial occupation. The rebellion ignited a broad movement of both armed revolt, and political activism. Ottoman Great War veterans organized the fighters. French mandate forces met them with furious counterinsurgent violence. The revolt began in rural areas, but it found support among politicised Syrians of all classes and communities. Despite its initial successes, French aerial bombing and massive military reinforcements crushed the ‘ṯawra’ (revolution or revolt) by 1927. The revolt was the largest post-Ottoman Arab revolt, until Palestine in 1936, and provided a template and model that has remained potent until today. The history of the Revolution, or revolt, has been written and rewritten in academic works and political memory. In 2011, as Syrians took to the streets to protest against al-Assad’s authoritarian rule, their actions and ideals found echoes within the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925 and its legacy.

Inherent to the biases induced by translation into foreign languages, the successive names for the Great Revolt of 1925 came about mainly after the end of the movement, under the dual influence of urban narratives and Arab nationalism. The revolts of the 1920s (known as the ‘Northern Revolt 1919-1921’ and the ‘Great Syrian Revolt’) should be understood as the expression of patterns mobilisation stemming from a longue durée, whose dynamics lay at the crossroads of local solidarity and community allegiances modelled on blood ties ('aṣabiyya). In the wake of the First World War, the ‘iṣābāt were transformed by political and military modernity so rapidly that, at the end of the Great Revolt, their original form disappeared definitively.

Why did the nature of popular mobilisation change after the crushing of the Great Syrian Revolt in 1927? Why, while post-Ottoman modes of mobilisation seem to have disappeared from the Arab East, have the legacy and memory of these revolts survived? How and why did the revolts of the 1920s become such a reference that they have helped to sustain a living culture of popular rebellion to this day?

I - Anti-colonial ṯawrāt: rebels and locations of revolt

The Great Revolt began in a location mandate authorities had not expected. Far from the Damascene notables, the Druze were behind the first actions. But while remote from the city, many had been administrative partners with French and Ottoman officials. They were joined by merchants from the Mīdān of Damascus, following the information channels established by the grain trade. The revolt mobilised different groups and social categories, and went beyond the sectarian revolt and a few political or military elites: a whole segment of the last Ottoman generation took part. Some soldiers in the Armée du Levant, at the core of the repression, deserted or joined the revolt. The aim will be to examine the ‘collective action’ that characterised insurrectionary movements by studying the variety of connections between the individuals involved in the revolt.

Ṯawra is multifaceted: from demonstrations to armed insurrection, from guerrilla warfare to leaflets, from occupation to opposition petitions, and including the provision of material or financial support for rebellion. It is embedded in social forms that can be identified in acts and slogans. Contributions should explore the words and actions of the revolt in all of their diversity, and grasp how the revolt takes place in space and time. The question of how to spread the revolt is central: how could one be persuaded to join it, or to oppose it? Mobilisation reveals the structures and fractures that run through Syrian society: local or regional tribal solidarity, a sense of transnational religious community, ephemeral alliances…

Mobilisation also challenges the mandate's territorialisation. The militarisation of the repression, carried out by military columns and air strikes, and the scant use of police forces suggests that the mandate sought to control mobility, not space. The various police forces failed during the uprising: Lebanese gendarmes were mobilised to put down the uprising, while many Syrian gendarmes laid down their arms or joined the revolt. Through resistance contacts and post-Ottoman, diasporic, community or anti-colonial networks, the rebels built a movement that went beyond Syria, while giving substance to a Syrian proto-nationalism of Faysalian heritage. From local mobilisations to marginal international networks, from the villages of Hauran to the militants of Wadi al-Taym and tribes outside the geography of conventional revolt: the space of revolt will have to be defined and redefined.

II - Questions at a time of profound changes between two worlds (1918-1946)

Between 1911 and 1920, the Ottoman Arab East suffered the consequences of the Great War more than any other region of the empire. The implementation of the Ottoman reforms (Tanẓīmāt) such as the equality of the Sultan's subjects, conscription and military mobilisation, had profound and traumatic effects on the populations, as did the post-war occupations. The post-Ottoman rebellions (1919-1927) brought together ex-Ottoman soldiers, officials and ordinary people. Whether they came from Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem or the hinterlands of Greater Syria, almost all of them hated the division of the territories and the occupation implemented by the two mandatory powers (France and Great Britain). While they could agree on what they opposed, agreement on what they sought was more difficult.

How did Syrians involved in guerrilla warfare envisage themselves as a society in their liberation? What representations of the State and the nation to be built do they have of themselves? What territorial vision do they seek? Was it that of a national territory - al-rubū' al-Sūriyya - whose shape was defined especially after 1927? The theme of Syrian unity emerged before the Great Revolt, on the one hand to counter the division of territories promoted by the mandate, but also, on the other hand, in an effort, theorised by the nationalists, to build a Syrian ‘nation’ (umma) by opposing communal and even ethnic divisions. Unity, sacralised in contemporary struggles for sovereignty, has become a cornerstone of Syrian political culture.

III - From one ṯawra to another

The 1920s revolts have been a constant feature of Syrian history, memory and politics over the last century. The centrality of the revolts to official narratives and identity waned between 1966 and 2024, for reasons having to do with politics and the identity of the state. Arguably memories of revolt have returned to prominence since 2011, and perhaps even more since December 2024. Hawran and the Countryside of Damascus were central in 1925, and they were central in the Syrian Revolution after 2011 also.

From 2011 to 2024 comparisons arose, drawing on the history of the revolts, their territories and also the vehicles through which they were mobilised: from the widespread outcry to the action of the military (whether deserters or not), on to the key role of rural peripheries, on to symbolic times and places (the 40th Day, Friday mosque sermons, etc.), the centrality of Islam at the heart of an imaginary and plural referent, and the forms of local organisation of the ṯawra, etc. Much seemed to point back to 1919-1927; a time when the future seemed to be suddenly open. Closer examination shows a link with the political struggles of the 1930s, which also reveal a new generation of nationalists and the involvement of women in the field.

It is by examining the memory of the ṯawra of 2011-2024, using all possible media - oral (including songs and chants), written, opposition media, videos, etc. - that scholars may point out the emergence of a new protest culture. It is by examining the memory of the ṯawra from 2011-2024 through all possible media - oral (including songs and chants), written, clandestine media, videos, etc. - that researchers can point to the emergence of a new protest culture and define the extent to which it follows in the wake of the struggles of the inter-war period and the extent to which it is uniquely of its time.

IV - Rediscovering sources

In the national archive centres of the Arab world, most of which came into being only recently, contemporary archives are only rarely accessible. In 1959, the Damascus Historical Archives Centre (Markaz al-wathā'iq al-tārīkhiyya) was made up of collections gathered over the years from different cities (Hama, Aleppo, Homs). In this centre, the best-known, most accessible collections are those produced by the Ottoman bureaucracy, and more particularly the court registers (siǧillāt al-maḥākim); the archives produced subsequently remained restricted to a few documentary series often consisting of documents from the mandatary period. This centralisation of archives in the capital was not total, however, and many documents remained in their institution of production or were still hidden in unusual places by certain offices and scholars. As in Egypt, in Syria the French legal model of reinforced protection of archives and their consultation is the norm. This enhanced protection means that access to archives is restricted by an administrative system that is managed on a case-by-case basis and is more or less arbitrary depending on the degree of authoritarianism of the government. In the absence of strict legislation on the obligation to archive the documentation produced by public institutions, this heritage doctrine becomes opaque and reinforces the degree of distrust that some have towards official archive bodies. Thus, the history of contemporary Syria, and more particularly of the Mandate period and the construction of the modern State, has been built up through colonial archives (particularly after the opening of the archives of the High Commission for Syria and Lebanon at the Centre des Archives Diplomatiques in Nantes), autobiographical accounts and private archives, the consultation of which depends on the degree of trust their holders have in the researcher. While the press and literature have made it possible to open up the field to a great deal of work in the interests of an ‘equal’ history, ‘private’ archives have become some true treasures.

Today, following the fall of the Assad regime on 08 December 2024, it is pertinent to revisit the issues of access to sources and the places where documentation is held, whether it be private, public, privatised, exiled or simply hidden in the institution where it was produced. While some collections have been carefully moved to safe locations (notably those at the Damascus Historical Archives Centre), others remain hidden: their existence is enigmatic. After more than a decade of destruction, if the writing of the history of contemporary Syria enters a new era, that of all possibilities; the work of the historian will also be that of the archivist to identify, find, process and map all the Syrian documentary collections scattered at the whim of political resistance, war violence and the exile of archive holders.

How to contribute
We invite researchers from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences (history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, political science, etc.) to submit proposals for papers (in English, French or Arabic) that fall within one or more of the four areas described above. To submit your proposals, please send them before 15 June 2025 to: colloque.grs@gmail.com. Proposals should be limited to 300 words, and should include a brief presentation of the author.

In view of the limited resources available for the conference, we invite participants to request that their travel and accommodation costs be covered by their home institution. The organisers may be able to offer assistance if necessary. Papers will be presented in person; no remote arrangements are possible.